The first instance of violence associated with modern team sports is unknown, but football related violence can be traced back to 14th Century England. In 1314, Edward II banned football, which at that time, WAS a violent, unruly activity, involving rival villages kicking a pig's bladder across the local heathland or from one part of the village to another. The King believed the disorder surrounding matches might lead to social unrest or even treason.
Conflict at an 1846 match in Derby, England, required a reading of the RIOT ACT and two groups of dragoons (soldiers) to respond effectively to the disorderly crowd. This was identified as "pitch invasions", a common occurrence during the 1880s in English football. The Derby team has its nickname, The Rams, as a tribute to its links with the First Regiment of Derby Militia, which took a ram as its mascot. Additionally, the club also adopted the song "The Derby Ram" as its regimental song. Rammie is the first FULL TIME mascot in the Football League. 1,500 saw this drubbing. Derby Football Club officially formed in 1884, out of the Derbyshire County Cricket Club, where the players wanted to keep fit, playing the winter sport and so the club was almost named Derbyshire County FC. The club's first official competitive match came in November 1884, in the FA Cup 1st Rd, where they lost 0-7, at home to Walsall Town.
Arguably the most important match in the club's history (so far) came a year later, on November 14th 1885, in a Second Round FA Cup tie, when 6,000 saw a 2–0 victory over Aston Villa, already an emerging force in English football. This victory established Derby County on the English football map, helping the club to attract better opposition for friendlies. Unfortunately, they lost their next Round match to Small Heath Alliance (eventually Birmingham City FC) 4-2. During this 1885-6 FA Cup campaign, the Old Carthusians, the old boys of Charterhouse School, lasted two rounds longer, eventually losing to West Bromwich Albion 1-0 in Rd 5. West Brom went on to lose the final in a replay to Blackburn Rovers, as the growth of professionalism took over Cups and Leagues.
In 1888, an invitation came to join the inaugural Football League. The opening day of the first ever league season was 8 September 1888, when Derby came from 3–0 down, away to Bolton Wanderers, to win 6–3. The club ultimately finished the season 10th out of 12 teams. From 1895 they played at the Baseball Ground, where unsurprisingly, Baseball had previously been played and the club stayed there for 102 years.
Although instances of football crowd violence and disorder have been a feature of association football throughout its history, (e.g. at Millwall's ground, The Den, was reportedly closed in 1920, 1934 and 1950 after crowd disturbances), the phenomenon only started to gain the media's attention in the late 1950s due to the re-emergence of violence in Latin America. In the 1955–56 English football season, Liverpool and Everton fans were involved in a number of incidents and, by the 1960s, an average of 25 hooligan incidents were being reported each year in England. The label "football hooliganism" first began to appear in the English media in the mid-1960s, leading to increased media interest in, and reporting of, acts of disorder. It has been argued that this, in turn, created a "moral panic" out of proportion with the scale of the actual problem.
Fans have been permitted to bring in newspapers but the larger broadsheet newspapers work best for a Millwall brick, and the police looked with suspicion at somne football fans (particularly at Millwall) who carried such newspapers. Because of their more innocent appearance, tabloid newspapers became the preferred choice for Millwall bricks. "Newspapers were folded again and again and squashed together to form a cosh, so-called The Millwall Brick!! Another trick was to make a knuckleduster out of pennies held in place by a wrapped around paper. You could hardly be pulled up for having a bit of loose change in your pocket and a Daily Mirror under your arm."
